4 ms·

Political extremes are bad. Be in the Soviet Union on his day, the Nazi Regime, or the mini nationalistic-US blended with Neoconism. You can't mix a free marke

by anthk 2y ago

Political extremes are bad. Be in the Soviet Union on his day, the Nazi Regime, or the mini nationalistic-US blended with Neoconism. You can't mix a free market with an ultraconservative goverment with zero social rights unless you want your potential clients either flee away or die en masse. The same with Communism without individual rights. I support an European style healthcare (I live in Spain and it works great), but some things like telecomms are better under private companies (or even community-built such as Mesh networks). The future is not about extremes, but more like a moderated approach for goverments, such as social democracies. Mixing the worst stuff of every side it's the recipe for collapse. Be in the US with schizophrenic self-harming classical liberal-conservative neocons, or in Russia with Duginism.

oulipo 2y ago
Telecoms ARE under private companies in Europe... also here we have full-speed fiber internet... for $30/month, not $150 like in the US...
- anthk 2y ago
  I'm from Spain, I know it pretty well. When telecos were a state monopoly, long distance calls were horrible, very expensive. And no flat rates for Internet in late 90's even with ISDN, until DSL I think. Once the telecomms where liberalised, prices plummeted down with new ISP's everyhwere. OTOH, healthcare from private companies are just good for very trivial surgeries, such as lumps or some minor aestethic surgery if you are in a hurry. For the rest, public healthcare it's far better.
  - oulipo 2y ago
    Yes, I mean that's how we do it in Europe... it's always more or less some liberalism for economical stuff, with strong state guards to avoid them trying to ripoff consumers, and public schools and healthcare, as those are our crown jewels and we don't want to let stupid businesses trash them
    - DarkWiiPlayer 2y ago
      Sometimes it can help to have a state-provided option to set a baseline that the free market needs to beat in order to attract customers. Some things are just natural oligopolies and the danger of exploitation can be mitigated by just having an alternative that isn't trying to optimise for profit.
DarkWiiPlayer 2y ago
> The future is not about extremes Yea, but right-wing ideologues are doing their best to prevent this and instead convince everyone that we must be ideologically pure (privatise everything for the sake of it) rather than just find the sweet spot and do what works. Inviting scientists to come to Europe is a good sign that on this continent we're still open to reality and would rather know how things are than pretend they are how we want them to be.

by anthk 2y ago

oulipo 2y ago

Telecoms ARE under private companies in Europe... also here we have full-speed fiber internet... for $30/month, not $150 like in the US...

anthk 2y ago
I'm from Spain, I know it pretty well. When telecos were a state monopoly, long distance calls were horrible, very expensive. And no flat rates for Internet in late 90's even with ISDN, until DSL I think. Once the telecomms where liberalised, prices plummeted down with new ISP's everyhwere. OTOH, healthcare from private companies are just good for very trivial surgeries, such as lumps or some minor aestethic surgery if you are in a hurry. For the rest, public healthcare it's far better.
- oulipo 2y ago
  Yes, I mean that's how we do it in Europe... it's always more or less some liberalism for economical stuff, with strong state guards to avoid them trying to ripoff consumers, and public schools and healthcare, as those are our crown jewels and we don't want to let stupid businesses trash them
  - DarkWiiPlayer 2y ago
    Sometimes it can help to have a state-provided option to set a baseline that the free market needs to beat in order to attract customers. Some things are just natural oligopolies and the danger of exploitation can be mitigated by just having an alternative that isn't trying to optimise for profit.

DarkWiiPlayer 2y ago

> The future is not about extremes Yea, but right-wing ideologues are doing their best to prevent this and instead convince everyone that we must be ideologically pure (privatise everything for the sake of it) rather than just find the sweet spot and do what works. Inviting scientists to come to Europe is a good sign that on this continent we're still open to reality and would rather know how things are than pretend they are how we want them to be.